


Hawkesight

by crystalrequiem



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, FIx It, Fate and Chance, Gen, Graphic injuries, Multi, Sibling Bonding, Whump, slow decent into insanity, yaaaaay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-04 17:50:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1083928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalrequiem/pseuds/crystalrequiem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a young child, Hawke has a dream. He watches his little sister die at the hands of a terrifying monster, his mother cold in his arms, his world shattered at his feet. In most worlds, he wakes, shakes the nightmare and forgets it all as he cries into his mother's skirt in the early hours of the morning.</p><p>But in this world... he Wakes, opens himself and his magic to the fateways and seeks out all the ways to keep his family safe.</p><p>There's no going back, no forgetting, and no mistakes. One time counts for all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So, as I'm supposed to be finishing up my finals, I'm writing this monstrosity instead. 
> 
> you are welcome.
> 
> This thing has been eating at my brain almost since DAII came out, way back when. and yet I still haven't decided on pairings... just.... maybe as you read this you'll understand why. XD
> 
> Let me know what you think!

* * *

            Things were wonderful after the twins were born. Malcom had found some work with an herbalist who didn’t ask questions, there was food on the table and everyone was happy. Garrett made just the cutest older brother. He ran around the house doing anything she asked, if he thought it was somehow for the twins. He really took his new role seriously.

            Then one day out of the blue, Garrett just burst into tears at the breakfast table.

            “What’s wrong, dear?” His mother prodded, petting his hair, pulling him into her lap.

            “I can’t do it Mama. I can’t,” he wailed forlornly, sounding so utterly heartbroken that no one knew quite what to do about it. Leandra looked to her husband across the table. He frowned, shrugged. They had no idea what this was about.

            “You can’t what, darling?”

            “You told me to keep them safe, but I can’t figure it out. No matter what I do it seems like they’re going to get hurt.” He was looking at the twins, seated in their respective high-chairs at the head of the table like the little rulers of the house they truly were.

            “Oh, no dear! Don’t worry so!” Leandra placated, half-laughing. Is _that_ what this was about? Surely the tyke didn’t know what he was on about. She hadn’t meant to make him feel so much responsibility when she told him to take care of his new brother and sister from now on. “You’ll be a wonderful older brother! The best!” She had to wonder at the way his sobbing doubled after that, or how, years later, she’d find him red-eyed in the twins’ room in the middle of the night, watching them sleep like he’d never get another chance to do so. It was… strange… but then she remembered who she’d married and she figured she could allow for a bit of weirdness.

* * *

 

            The house never seemed to calm down once the children discovered their magic. Bethany was first. She’d been having a bit of a row with Carver and the next thing anyone knew, the thatching had caught flame. Still, the eldest Hawke child had been ready with a bucket of water, and there hadn’t been too much damage. Mostly it had just been a happy occasion.

            Then, one day as Bethany was taking lessons from her father, Garrett just joined in, as if he’d always done so.  

            “You… you have the gift too, my child?” Malcom had exclaimed, aghast.

            “Hunh?” Garrett looked at his gaping siblings and father in confusion, careful not to let go of the lightning floating in his palm, “Oh, had I not told you yet, in this one?”

            After that, it started to become obvious, what Hawke _really_ was.

            “Bethany, I’ve heard rumor the Templars are upping their patrols near the woods. Maybe you shouldn’t play there today,” he suggested to the girl as they traded a fire ball carefully back and forth under their father’s watch. Bethany shot him an odd, analyzing look at the proclamation, but it seemed innocent enough. Leandra and Malcom didn’t think much of it. But then….

            “Mother, you might want to stay home today. I’m afraid it might rain,” he’d cautioned Leandra as she readied her shawl and her basket for a trip to the market.

            “Nonsense, dear. There’s not a cloud in the sky. Why would I—” Garrett’s expression turned pained. He actually took her basket from her and set it back on the floor. “Garrett!” She admonished, to no avail.

            “Stay home today,” he insisted, with such a ferocity that she could only blink as he wandered back into the house, back to corralling the twins as usual. Not five minutes later it started raining, and Leandra started to wonder.

* * *

 

            “Carver, hanging around with those kids is a bad idea. I really don’t think you should—”

            “Aw, who cares what you think,” Carver grumped back at his protective older brother, tromping off to play with his friends. Garrett stood there, looking a bit shell-shocked, before sighing in his odd, resigned way. Leandra watched with growing alarm from the kitchen doorway as he turned to a grumbling Bethany, hugged her and whispered something. Whatever it was, the girl was left gaping and wide-eyed as Garrett stormed off the same way as Carver. Bethany sprung into motion as soon as the door was shut, running to the bathroom.

            “Bethany?” Leandra called, wary of secrets in her home. “What’s wrong?”

            “Garrett said to get bandages ready for when he comes back and to call Dad back home,” Bethany seemed perfectly ready to do as asked. Leandra frowned, tucking her dishrag into her waistband.

            “What? Why?”

            “Something bad’s going to happen, I guess,” Bethany mused, tromping from bathing room to the front room with her arms full of trailing bandages. “Any guesses where dad is, right now?”

            “Why does Garrett think something bad is going to happen?”

            “I dunno,” Bethany shrugged, slipping on her shoes. “But Garrett’s never wrong.” Leandra frowned as her daughter left the house next, wandering out to seek Malcom and bring him home. Maybe Malcom could pull some sense out of all of this.

            “Did something happen?” Malcom came bustling back to the house not too long later, a sleepy Bethany gathered in his arms.

            “I don’t know. Apparently Garrett thought you should be home.” Leandra mused tiredly, utterly confused by her own children. She resolved to take it in stride. She and Malcom were cracking smiles across the entryway at their children’s silliness when both sons showed up on the horizon, frantic and covered in blood.

            It stopped being funny very quickly.

* * *

 

            “Explain,” Malcom folded his arms and glared at their youngest son, after the worst of the terror had passed. Leandra would be happy if she never had to see her husband heal another of their children again. Garrett was safe now, somehow, but she gathered from the pallor of Malcom’s face that it must have been a close thing. She didn’t even want to think about losing one of her babies.

            “I… I went to go play with my friends and Garrett told me not to. I went anyway, because I thought—”

            “Well that was dumb,” Bethany scoffed, angry and red-eyed at Garrett’s side. “You _know_ Garrett’s always right!”

            “Not _always_ always! Sometimes he gets confused,” He told Malcom and Leandra plainly, as if that cleared any confusion.

            “That doesn’t explain why your brother came home with a bolt in his side!” Malcom reminded. Carver balked, hands fidgeting nervously at his shirt hem.

            “Well, he said someone was gonna do something stupid today. I told him that was dumb, and he should bug off like a _normal_ older brother, but… then he said I’d get hurt if he did that, so…”

            “He should have left you,” Bethany grumbled.

            “Yeah, whatever! He probably should have, okay?” Leandra and Malcom traded confused glances over their children’s heads.

            “Is there more to this story?” Malcom prodded again, knocking Carver back into his contrite fidgeting.

            “Well… when we got to the hideout, John had brought his dad’s crossbow over to show off. And we were gonna go hunting together, to prove we could, you know?”

            “Six year olds with a crossbow!” Leandra exclaimed, her hands white knuckled with fear now that she realized all the things that possibly could have happened.

            “I…I wasn’t gonna go with them! Honest!” Carver blatantly lied, “It’s not like it mattered anyway. John tripped while we were climbing back out to the entrance, and the crossbow fired, and… well it looked like it was gonna hit me but Garrett shoved me out of the way, so…”

            “Of course he did,” Bethany snarked, taking advantage of the silence her parents left open. “He knew it was gonna happen. He _told_ you so, like he always does!”

            “Yeah, well…. Yeah. I know.” Leandra watched with growing horror as Carver accepted his sister’s statement. She glanced between the sour-faced twins and her unconscious, too-palid son on the pallet between them.

            “Garrett…. Knew? About the crossbow?” Malcom asked Bethany this time. The precocious girl just clicked her tongue at them.

            “I don’t see why else he would have told me to get bandages and find dad before he left the house.” Oh, that was right, Leandra thought to herself. She’d been so frantic with worry for her bleeding child that she hadn’t even thought about…

            “Did he hear something from the other boys?” her husband sounded frightened, perhaps more so even than when he’d pulled the damned bolt from between their kid’s ribs. “Children, this is very important, what do you mean that your brother _knew_?”

            “I dunno. He just… knows things sometimes,” Bethany told them, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. Malcom buried his face in his hands for reasons Leandra couldn’t properly understand.

* * *

 

            “So, you threw yourself in front of a crossbow bolt to spare your younger brother from the same fate, eh Garrett?” He woke groggily to the question. His eyes opened to find his father, leaning uncomfortably toward his bedside, seated backwards on a hard-backed chair. Bethany, Carver and his mother were all asleep elsewhere in the room. Bethany was curled against his left side, and if it weren’t for the wound still smarting there he suspected he’d have Carver on his right. Instead, the trouble maker was bundled safely in their mother’s lap, who leant against the wall at the foot of his bed.

            He loved moments like this. Perfect, unbreakable moments. For a few breaths, everything was quiet and still. The fates did not shift. Reality did not diverge. And he could just… exist.

            Then he looked back to his father, blinked, and saw a thousand different ways this conversation could go. He didn’t mind. He’d seen this coming from the moment he’d watched Carver set foot out the door this morning. At that point, the only way to hide his abilities would have been to let Carver get hurt and that was something he just… couldn’t do.

            “Something like that,” he mumbled, glad to hear his own voice sound so strong and clear when he felt anything _but_ on the inside. “Thanks for coming back from… the spindleweed copse in the wood, was it? Must have been. If it were the iron-bark clearing I’d be dead.” He pronounced cheerily, resorting and reordering reality as it now existed. Sometimes it was hard to remember which path they were on, and which divergent threads were still possible.

            “ _Son_ ,” Malcom said the word desperately, his face twisted up with regret.

            “Father,” Garrett smarted back, with a sad smile. “Don’t get all weird on me now. I’d not told you before and maybe I should have. But now you know and Carver is safe.”

            “It isn’t Carver I’m worried about now,” the man pressed, looking pointedly at the bandages covering Garrett’s midsection. “My grandmother had your…particular gift, you know.” Garrett tilted his head, to prove he was listening. He’d already seen this happen, so he already knew the story, but it was nice to hear it nonetheless. “When she was conscious enough of the world around her, she would warn us of one thing or another, but as I got older, especially after grandfather died she got… trapped in the web of possibilities. She had no idea what reality was going on around her as she dreamed and she just… wasted away.”

            “Mm.” Garrett agreed, trying not to think too hard about his own future. It was too far away to be set in stone yet, but he’d seen some of the possibilities. Becoming trapped by his own powers and unable to affect the world around him was certainly one of them.

            “And there were other stories. Earlier family members who couldn’t bear the thought of loved ones dying, getting themselves killed instead. Or following the wrong fate and leading themselves to the very grisly end they were trying to avoid.”

            “That can happen, I suppose. If one relies too much on things that _might_ happen,” he commented, thinking of a few of his own earlier experiments with the stream of fate.

            “Son, what I’m trying to say is… this power is not one to be used lightly. If there were any way to… to turn it off, or to just… to not develop it, before it’s too late. For your poor mother’s sake if nothing else. _Please_.” Garrett closed his eyes, his arms folding in front of his ribcage. He knew that there could have been a way. He figured out his powers just after the twins were born. And maybe back then, there was a way he could have shut this power off. He thought, maybe, there were some realities where he rejected the Sight, where he assumed it had all been a terrible nightmare and the twins couldn’t really die or become monsters and no one would dare harm his family.

            But in this reality… in this reality he just couldn’t bear the thought that maybe it could happen, and he would have done nothing to stop it. He could not bury his head in the sand. It was not an option he had any longer.

            “Father, when I look at you, I see about a thousand different things you could chose to do in the next few seconds. When you will or will not decide to take a breath here or there, when you will blink, when you will interrupt me or throw up a quick spell for light, or…” he paused before he could get too lost in the pathways, breathing in and out as they diverged in the present. He tried not to think too hard about the growing alarm on his father’s face. “If I close my eyes, without even trying, I see all the ways we could die today, or tomorrow, and all the ways to make them stop. If I think of Bethany, I can see all the ways she might grow up and all the adventures she might have,” here, he paused, as his vision of Bethany’s death flashed once more before his eyes. The Ogre picked her up, slammed her to the ground twice, and threw her. He knew the vision well. It was a fate that he’d been working against—one he’d been trying to fix from the beginning. It had been absent from her stream for some time—he thought maybe he’d finally fixed it but…

            “Garrett?” His father questioned, and the younger mage had to shake his head to keep the ugly vision at bay. He had time. He would _make_ it work.

            “I can see a million, million fates, but if I focus on your question, and ask myself if there is a way to stop this… I see only one.”

            “And, what fate is that?” Garrett smiled at the question, the look a little too sad and too old to be on his young face.

            “You’d have to kill me.” Needless to say, that was the end of that conversation.

 

* * *

 

            He didn’t know how much his father told his mother, or the twins. Or, well, he shouldn’t have known. He _knew_ of course, because it had happened within the timestream and it was easy enough to go backwards and pick up the used thread. But he tried not to think about it too much out of respect for their privacy.

            In any case, everyone seemed to tiptoe around him for weeks afterward. Mother got a strange, sad look on her face anytime she was in the same room. Even the twins didn’t seem to know what to do with him. It lasted until Garrett finally grew fed up with it, plopped down at the unusually silent dinner-table and huffed,

            “Well it’s not as if I’m suddenly going to implode.” Everyone paused in whatever they had been doing, all staring at him in sheepish surprise.

            “What do you mean, dear?” His mother asked, the spoonful of potatoes she’d intended to go on Bethany’s plate still hanging tipped in the air. He rolled his eyes and reached out to serve the potatoes himself before they could fall (as he knew they would.)

            “So I know things. So what. It didn’t seem to bother you before, I don’t see why it bothers you now.” He admonished, his tone a little too snarky and old to fit his form. One of the side effects of knowing too much, he supposed. He handed the potato spoon back to his mother. 

            “It… doesn’t bother us at all, dear,” his mother lied, looking warily at the spoon and the bowl it had come from. Garrett glanced at them all and sighed. He didn’t want to show off, but if it would get them to stop treating him like a china doll…. Carver squirmed.

            “Can I—”

            “No, Carver, you are not excused. You don’t have to pee, you’re just going to go play with your toys in the washroom. Bethany, if you try to burn your carrots to ashes under the table today, mother will smell it and father will find out and be cross. Father, no, you shouldn’t punish Bethany for something she hasn’t done yet but might have been thinking about. There. Is that more like you expected?” The stunned silence lasted all of six seconds before Bethany burst into laughter and Carver grumpily tossed a carrot at her face. Bedlam reigned, more food was thrown, Father shouted and everything was back to normal.

            “I’m sorry, my baby,” his mother cooed as she tucked him into bed that night, brushing his bangs out of his eyes. “I didn’t realize I was treating you differently. I just worry for you, knowing so much.”

            “Yeah. I understand,” he chimed, and it was true. He really did understand her worry for them—the way she loved them, how she could waste away if even one of them died, how she could be the last, how her cold, dying hands felt in his own. “Yeah,” he repeated again, his breath catching as he grabbed for her retreating fingers, needing to make sure she was here and real and warm.

            “Garrett?”

            “Sorry mom, can you just, um, sit… for a minute? I—” He tried not to let the tears color his voice as he begged, but she must have heard them. His mother always did have the best intuition when it came to her children. She rushed to sit beside him on the bed.

            “Dear, what’s wrong?” He tried to come up with something to say that wouldn’t scare her. He was having trouble forming a thought that didn’t scare _himself_.

            “Just, a possibility for an instant. Think of it… think of it like a bad dream. A nightmare.” Because that’s all it was. He wouldn’t let that happen to her. Not to his mother, not to any of them. He _wouldn’t_.

            “Okay,” She said, and questioned nothing else. She just, hugged him and rocked him as she hummed, heedless of the vacant yet frantic look on his face as he sorted through the fates, searching for the threads that would let him save everyone. Neither of them slept that night.

* * *

 

            “Carver,” Garrett said the name in a whoosh of air one day, as he was marching off to sword practice. The twins looked at each other sidelong, sure nothing good could come of hearing Garrett use _that voice_.

            “Yes?” Carver answered, skeptically.

            “You… I…” He swallowed once or twice, hugging himself around the middle. He looked indecisive—a rare and foreboding expression on their brother’s face.

            “Garrett?” Bethany questioned, placing a hand on his shoulder to ground him. They’d found that when his mind seemed to be wandering, a touch or pull here and there could bring him back. Both of them remembered their father’s warnings. That Garrett might someday fall into his visions and not be able to find his way back out. He blinked at them both, his expression raw with a kind of hurt they would never understand.

            “You look good in a soldier’s uniform,” he settled for saying, before stumbling to his room and shutting the door behind him.

            “Well. I guess he approves then…” Carver mused, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. Bethany balked.

            “You’re going to enlist?!” she exclaimed, careful not to raise her voice too much, and alert their mother.

            “Yeah, so what?” He grumped, defensive.

            “You can’t! What about—”

            “What about nothing! I’m almost eighteen and I don’t have any kind of trade. Father can’t teach me anything because I don’t have magic. We can’t be close enough to any of our neighbors out of fear of them finding out we’re a family of mages for me to get any kind of apprenticeship… unless you want me to beg for my living, this is the only thing I’ve got!” He insisted hotly. Bethany winced with each mention of magic, as if even her father and brother’s gifts were somehow her fault.

            “Okay, okay just…. Be careful?” she cautioned, “I don’t know what it would do to mother if something happened to you.”

            “Yeah, yeah,” Carver brushed her concern away easily. “Look, if something really bad was going to happen, our resident Oracle would have stopped me, right?”

            “That may be, but don’t take his acceptance as an invitation to be even more reckless than usual! You can change things. You know this!” They’d experimented with their brother’s warnings before as kids. How could they not? It was so tempting to find a way to prove him wrong. Usually he managed to figure out what they were going to do before the story came to any kind of conclusion, and his warning would change. It was easy enough to figure out that the fates were never static.

            Carver sighed, giving in to the better part of caution. He knew enough not to be stupid, sometimes.

            “I’ll be careful, okay? Are you happy?” They both glanced at Garrett’s closed door, still shut tight. They hadn’t changed anything too terribly then. “Take care of those three for me, eh? They’re gonna get bored without me there to keep them on their toes,” Carver teased, grasping Bethany’s forearm as if she were his comrade in arms and not his sister. She grumbled and pulled him into a proper hug.

            “I’m going on the record as saying this is a terrible idea, right now. Even if Garrett seems not to mind.”

            “Record noted, you silly thing,” Carver teased back, sounding uncharacteristically grown up and ready to go. Bethany wiped her tears behind his back so he wouldn’t notice. He probably knew. They were twins, after all. “Bye. I’m not going to come back tonight and have mom and dad try to argue me out of it. You—You’ll have to tell them for me.”

            “Now that’s just cruel and unusual.” Bethany half-laughed, close to trembling as she realized this was actually happening. She was going to lose her twin, who’d been by her side quite nearly every moment of her life. Sure, he was a tit sometimes, but… he was her brother.

            “Bye sis,” He said one last time, hugging her again in a final, tight squeeze. Then, he spun on a heel and marched away.

 

* * *

 

            “Why didn’t you stop him?!” his mother had pleaded after Bethany revealed, candidly over the dinner table, just what Carver had done. And Garrett had not known how to tell her all his reasons without making things change. He searched for the way, and searched and searched, his heart aching in his chest. What could he have done? What could he have done? There were a thousand other pathways and places where he’d told Carver to stay. Where he’d told Carver soldering didn’t end well, and so Carver became a criminal instead, and died in an honorless cartel war. Or where he’d warned Carver off the gangs too, and so he’d killed himself out of lack of purpose and feeling like he had no control of his own life. Or where he merely warned Carver to be careful, and in annoyance Carver had been exceedingly foolhardy and gotten himself killed instead of just mentally scarred. And maybe somehow he felt like he was signing his brother over to the horror of the war to come, but he didn’t know how to—he couldn’t—

            “Garrett!” he blinked, only to find Bethany frantically pulling at him, one hand laced with his own, the other tugging at his shirt. “Mom didn’t mean it, okay?” she sobbed, her fingers gripping his so tight that he almost couldn’t feel them. “You did the best you could, right? Don’t think about it so much. _Please_.” He looked around the room, taking in the abandoned dinner and his suspiciously missing parents. He thought he might hear his frantic mother in the next room, and his father’s careful, worried soothing.

            “Sorry,” he murmured, feeling out of sorts for the first time in a long while. “Did I slip under the Web again?” he asked out of habit, but he already knew. He could pick the past out as easily as breathing, could watch his family tense as his mother’s question was unleashed, the vacant, hurt look on his own face as he searched for an answer, and searched, and searched. His father’s worry, his mother’s anguish. And Bethany. Bethany. The only one there to see him through. Dear Bethany.

            _The ogre grabbed Bethany, and dashed her to the ground, once, twice. Her blood glistened through the air like macabre dew and she died with the first hit. Her neck snapped instantly in the short trip to the ground, the back of her head caved in on the second._

“Garrett, you’re slipping again,” Bethany admonished. She’d moved the hand at his shirt to his face, tracing tear tracks he didn’t remember falling. Without warning, he rushed forward and hugged her with his free arm, drawing her desperately close.

            “I will _never_ let anything happen to you or Carver while I yet draw breath. You know that, right? I—if Carver could have been happy without going to war, I…”

            “I know,” Bethany assured him, surprised and worried by his sudden, frantic affection. She raised a hand to comb soothingly through his hair. “I would never question you.” Garrett laughed, but the sound was not joyous.

            “No,” he murmured into her shoulder, “you really never do.”

* * *

 

            Malcom Hawke was putting on his coat and stepping out the door when his twenty-some year old, fully grown son up and hugged him from behind.

            “Garrett?” He questioned, patting the hands clutching at his chest awkwardly. “I’m going to be late to work.”

            “Yeah,” his eldest son mumbled into his back. He thought he felt tears dampening his hood. “Yeah, I know. Just—”

            “Ah,” reality dawned on him far more slowly than it should have. Malcom pulled away from the seer’s embrace and turned to look him in the face. “Something happens to me today, huh?” Sure enough, Garrett’s eyes were ringed with lack of sleep and damp with tears. He looked old, resigned.

            “You could say that,” he tried to joke, but the weight of the world took all the levity out of his voice.

            “Is there anything you could do to change it?” Malcom asked, already knowing the answer, waiting patiently for his son to sort through his realities nonetheless.

            “There are a few things but… you wouldn’t be happy with any of them.” He blinked, a little surprised by the words. He knew some of what his child had to go through—the decisions he weighted every day simply by knowing what every little action might lead to. He had forgotten some of that involved the feelings of others as well as their physical safety.

            “Like what?” He wondered, figuring he had time enough left to be curious.

            “Old ancient rituals, mostly. I could kill someone else and they could die in your stead, for instance. But, that never ends well for us.” He spoke as if he’d followed the thread of that fate, all the way out. He was utterly defeated, utterly broken in this and Malcom knew somehow that his poor son really had dreamt up every possible end for him, every possible, possible fate. 

            “No, that doesn’t sound like it would end well at all,” He assented, surprised by how okay with it all he felt. His son had come to see him off, and he guessed he didn’t mind. “Take care of your mother for me, hmm? Tell everyone I love them,” he murmured, and with one final embrace, before he could think about it too deeply, he was off.

            He didn’t come home.

* * *

 

            There was nothing he could have done.

            Malcom Hawke died of a simple heart attack on the way to the local doctor’s where he helped mix medicines every day. Somehow, he hadn’t had anything on him to give him away as a mage when they took the body away to be examined and buried. It probably would have killed mother to have to move again when she was still grieving over such a heavy death.

            He… there was really nothing he could have done.

            The doctors who examined the body said that Malcom’s heart had been failing for a very long time. That it was a good thing he was so good with medicine himself—he’d taken just the right herbs to keep himself going as long as he could, but he could only extend his life so much with medicine. It had to stop working sometime.

            Bethany had frozen like a deer in the headlights, even through her tears when they told her that. She’d never seen her father dose himself with anything.

            There was nothing else he could have done.

            “Couldn’t you have helped him?” His mother begged as they told her the news, the look on her face one of utter betrayal before she realized what she’d said, what she’d accused him of, and locked herself away in her room. Bethany didn’t follow. She stayed with him again, just like the time he’d let Carver march away, and pinned his thoughts down, anchoring him to the present.

            “How much extra time did you buy us?” his sister wondered, utterly un-accusing. She’d heard them talking about the medicine. She wasn’t stupid. She knew what he’d done.

            “Two years,” he choked through his tears and it was true. He’d been carefully slipping his father doses of an old witch’s mixture he’d seen in the past, or the future… he didn’t know which. It was good enough to prolong the inevitable but… “Only two years,” he cried again, trying not to think too hard about his mother’s sobs, perfectly audible the next room over.

            “Then, thank you,” Bethany consoled, smiling through her own wet lashes and red eyes. “Those two years were wonderful.” And they were. They really were. There was nothing more he could possibly, possibly do. But he didn’t think his mother could ever see that. He didn’t think she’d ever truly forgive him.

            No. He knew that she wouldn’t.


	2. Between Fate and Chance (the best he can give them)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Figure I might as well just post the first chapter since it's written.
> 
> *rubs hands together*  
> get ready children. It's all into the madhouse from here.

* * *

 

            The light visible through his window was orange—orange like fire and the sun behind ash. He looked outside and _knew_ what day it was. He knew it down to his very bones. He had the whole thing planned, a star-chart in his head. It all had to be perfect.

            “Brother, we have to go. Carver made it, we’ve got to run.” Bethany, dear Bethany, was stage whispering from the door, as if she would draw the darkspawn’s ire if she dared to speak. Garrett nodded her way, to show he understood, and pushed himself into the dance of fate.

            “Let’s go,” He told her and his mother as he pushed the door open, carrying only the most basic of supplies. If he played is cards right they wouldn’t need them.

            “But, all my things!” Leandra called in distress, as Bethany bustled her out of the house.

            “I’m more worried about your life!” his little sister reminded. Garrett was content to let her man-handle their mother down the path to where Carver was already waiting, both hands on the pommel of his long blade.

            “Oh, maker am I glad to see all of you,” Carver gasped in relief, passing the sword to one hand in order to hug first Bethany, and then his mother. He granted Garrett a tired, brotherly pat on the back.

            “Sorry, Carver,” he consoled, noting the tired shake to his brother’s muscles and the sweat dotting his brow. “You’re going to have to keep running, looks like,” he tried to keep his jovial façade, but he’d gone over and over this day so many times that it was as if he’d said the words a million times. Everything tasted like ash in his mouth. The way forward was set in stone, emblazoned in his mind.

            “Son-of-a-whore. And here I thought I could stop and smell the flowers.”

            “Carver! Language!” their ever-proper mother admonished, even as they drew weapons and arranged themselves in some kind of military-esque formation: a triangle shape with their mother at the center. Garett took the lead by tacit agreement. Everyone recognized he was the only reason they were going to get away. He had always kept them safe.

            (except when there was _nothing he could do_                         but that wouldn’t be today.             never. Never while I yet breathe, I—)

            “Don’t slip now, brother mine,” Bethany murmured, grasping at his elbow as they kept pace. Bethany, Bethany. He wouldn’t allow her to fall. Nor Carver, nor Mother, nor even Aveline.

            They stopped to breathe for only a moment when Leandra tripped. Bethany’s fire bought them a few seconds pause. Garrett’s eyes closed, knowing that if they moved _now_ he could make it to Aveline and Wesley before the Templar fell, could stop the darkspawn’s taint from taking the woman’s husband and save her a world of hurt.

            But he couldn’t quite tell what the consequences of that might be. It always ended poorly. In the times he actually made it before the blow fell, he usually lost one of the others instead. Mother, most times. Sometimes Aveline instead of Wesley, but those histories never ended well at all. And he couldn’t…. couldn’t…

            He couldn’t save _everyone_. But he could save a few.

            “Let’s go, before they find another way around,” Garrett murmured like a ghost, drifting forward unsteadily for a few steps before he righted himself and snapped back to the present like a bowstring. He had to stay focused. He had to make this count.

            “Has he been getting worse, or have I just lost my immunity the Garrett Hawke charm?” he heard Carver whispering to Bethany behind him. Or, didn’t quite hear, but he knew. He was keyed into them now—paying the closest possible attention to any divergences in their fates. He didn’t think he’d heard that sentence before in any of his dreamings. Was he ruining things already?

            No, no. The way forward still blazed like a brand.

            “It’s… getting harder to keep him focused,” he heard Bethany admit. “I could certainly use your help. He’s getting to be a full-time job.”

            “But the hours are great, and you love your boss, right?” He spouted back to them, feeling silly with adrenaline, anticipation and fear. He almost didn’t notice the open-mouthed, telling looks they shot each other behind his back as they realized he’d been _watching_ their conversation. Almost, but not. He didn’t dare take his focus far from them. Not now.

            Anything they would have said next was interrupted by more darkspawn and Hawke felt it. He _knew_ exactly the second Aveline appeared on the horizon where and when they were. Another hurdle passed. Mother and Carver and Bethany still alive. The path still clear. The words became a mantra in his head.

            _The path still clear_ , he told himself again, and it was the only thing keeping him from greeting the redhead with a cool-calm “ _Hello, Aveline.”_ because he knew her. He knew her inside and out, just as he knew the rest of his family. She was one of his own, and he would keep her.

            “The order dictates,” an injured Wesley insisted, and Carver stepped in front of them both to protect them. Garrett laid a gentle hand on his shoulder just as Aveline reigned her husband in.

            “We can hate each other once we’re safe,” He heard Aveline chime, and the words were like a cue—like a script in a play. He let Carver and Bethany discuss the prospects of their escape with the soldier (gardswoman, daughter, wife) and started walking.

            “If my choices are south, or die, I’ll go with south,” he quipped exactly in the place he should. The words rang hollow of any jocularity.

            “Is your brother alright?” He heard Aveline ask behind him. She was nearly carrying her Wesley along beside her, as easily as if he weighed no more than her shield.

            “Uh—” Carver started, before Bethany cut in

            “He’s a bit torn up, watching our home get destroyed and all.” And Aveline had nothing to argue with that. Hawke smiled as the fate-ways shuttered and shifted. Oh, oh, this world would be fun if he lived.

            _Bethany, Mother and Carver still alive. The path still clear._

They came upon darkspawn down the path, dispatched them easily with their magic and blades. But then… The final bluff loomed in sight. Garrett saw it and his breath froze in his chest mid-spell.

            _The ogre grabbed (Bethany, Carver, Mother) and dashed them twice against the ground. The first time snapped bone, easily, but didn’t kill. The second was merciful, cutting off an anguished scream mid-gurgle._

            No, wait

            _The ogre grabbed Aveline and tore her shield from her hands, whipping her through the air like a ragdoll and sending her sailing to the earth just a few feet away. A rock formation broke her fall and her spine. She died at Wesley’s side_

No, that wasn’t—”

            _The ogre grabbed Bethany and dashed her twice against the ground. The first time killed her instantly. The second broke the body, her blood spraying up from her mouth and the places where rocks tore through skin._

No! The way—the way was still clear. He had to remind himself the way was still clear!

            _The ogre grabbed…_

_“_ Garrett!” Carver had apparently reached him just before the darkspawn, and was shaking him, his sword still imbedded in a darkspawn corpse. “We have got to keep moving. You can have a mental breakdown later.” He didn’t bother to justify his brother’s worried, angry shouting with a response.

            “Carver,” he commanded, “stay close to Mother.” Something in his tone must have sounded familiar to his younger brother—like every time before he’d ever said anything for the kid’s own good. Usually, Carver tried to find some way to shirk the advice, but this time… this time, he just took on a shaded, pinched look, and nodded.

            Garrett made his way to Bethany as the group re-formed to march up that last hill and (unknowingly) make the final stand. He stood close and walked beside her with purpose.

            “Bethany,” he whispered in her ear with authority, just before the ground began to shake with footsteps, “I want you to know, no matter what happens, that this is the best I can do.”

            “What?!” she exclaimed, with no small amount of alarm. “What are you trying to say?! The rest of the group’s attention was drawn to them. Their conversation served as a distraction as the trembling started beneath their feet.

            “If I don’t make it, tell the dwarf his gamble won’t pay off. And keep the broody-elf from doing anything stupid. I know you can.” Because she was his contingency plan. Because if this all went belly-up and he died, he at least knew they could get away. Because there were others in his family—he just hadn’t met them yet. And he loved them no less and he didn’t know how else to help them from here when so much depended on the decisions they hadn’t yet made.

            “What does that even mean? Garrett, no!” Bethany shrieked in fear as their huge opponent loomed on the horizon and her older brother rushed it headlong. Garrett had thought this through, had planned and planned and planned for this day until he was sick to death of it. He landed a mind cage, trapping the thing within the mystic bars. It snarled at him, out of reach as he blasted it with spell after spell, damaging and weakening its thick hide. Bethany helped once she was over her shock, sending in fireballs when she knew they wouldn’t harm Garrett as well. But then there were more darkspawn to deal with, and she owed just as much love and responsibility to Carver and Mother. Her attention turned to keeping the minor ones at bay.

            The cage fell, the ogre broke through it with a monstrous bellow, one thick hand reaching back to grab its prey

            _The ogre grabbed Bethany. Two slams against the ground. Her bouncing body. His mother’s tears._

_The way was still clear_

            Garrett roared as he loosed a mighty bolt of lightning, sending the electricity straight through the soft tissue of the monster’s eyes, sparks flying through the bloody wounds where he’d damaged it before. It would not have her. It would not have any of them today. Not while he yet drew breath. Not while….

            The ogre grabbed Garrett Hawke with a flailing claw, even as it spasmed in its death throes. Its murderous limb caught the eldest Hawke child across the face, sending him sailing through the air, his fall broken only by the hard ground.

            Bethany, Carver, and Mother all screamed, and… he was alive to hear them. It worked. It worked. It must have worked—the fates shifted and twisted and the bad ones fell to the wayside. He’d really, really done it!

            But, he realized as he watched time spinning in a newly-endless dark, the threat was still real. If he stopped here, he might still lose them. He staggered to his feet, the world stretching black and unknown around him. Blood poured to the ground with sickening sounds as he stood, regained his feet. Small mercy he was a mage, out of close combat, or he’d likely be facing the same fate as Ser Wesley soon.

            Small mercy there was only a huge rent across his face in the space where his eyes used to rest, torn flesh and shattered bone on the bridge of his nose. He went into that fight knowing he had a chance of coming out dead, tainted or blind. And thank the gods it was blind. He could deal with blind.

            “Hawke!” Aveline barked, somewhere nearby, and he heard a darkspawn axe meet her shield, just a few seconds before her blade split its skull. “Stay behind me if you want to stay alive,” she barked, and Garrett allowed himself a smile. He shook his head, trying to pay no mind to how dizzy the motion made him.

            “It’s okay,” he heard himself say, and the words seemed to have been said by someone else, far away. “I think, I can still do this,” and he shifted within himself, drawing deeply at the threads of time and fate that surrounded him.

            He didn’t do this often, before. It was just so easy to get lost in the breaths between, where future met present. But he’d accomplished the task he set out to fix at the beginning of all of this. He hadn’t been so sure of himself since he was a child, back when nothing at all had yet gone wrong and everything lay before him like an unfolding map.

            He sunk into the frayed ends of fate where they were eaten by the horizon of the current. He listened to the possible moves and breaths and wounds, dodging where he could and herding the darkspawn to where he knew they would go, throwing spells at the spaces where he knew they would be. He left himself there, floating in the dark, waiting…until he felt a cautious hand on his arm.

            “Aveline?” He murmured, turning toward the sensation. He couldn’t see her any more, would never see her again, but he _knew_ her. Knew the way her brow would be furrowed in confusion, knew every freckle adorning her concerned face. 

            “Battle’s over, Hawke,” she told him gently, guiding him to lean against the rocks, beside her husband.

            “Oh,” he answered, “That’s good.” He was tripping over all the timeways laid out in his mind. Which time was this? Which reality? He couldn’t see the earth beneath him. He couldn’t see (Bethany, Carver, Mother). “Bethany?” He questioned weakly to the air. Now that he wasn’t fighting any more, he felt the full effects of all the blood he’d lost. “Bethany?” he begged, frantic.  

            “ _Why did you let her rush off like that! She was your little sister!_ ” his mother had wept, pleading with him, a thousand thousand times. He… he didn’t think she’d said that this time. Not yet. Not _ever_. He’d put a stop to that, right? He—

            “Oh, Maker above, Garrett!” It was Bethany’s voice, Bethany’s healing magic burning its way over his skin, Bethany’s tears on his cheek. He grasped her forearm as if it were his last line to life, grounding himself in this fate and this truth. He’d fought hard for it. He wasn’t about to let it slip away. “How could you have done something so _stupid_.” He could hear her. He could hear his mother, crying in the background (“Oh, my baby!”) he could hear Aveline speaking softly to her Wesley, but he couldn’t… he couldn’t find.

            “Carver?” He gasped out in fear, his empty hand searching. “Did I not…. Carver?” There were many realities where Carver could have died instead, but most of them were ones in which Garett had never been born a mage at all. But still, if he’d… if he’d mucked it all up somewhere, if somehow…

            “I’m here, you horse’s ass.” His brother’s sword-calloused hand met his, and Garrett smiled. “Next time you tell me to stay with Mother, I’ll do the smart thing and babysit you instead.”

            “Noted,” He joked back, going over everything in his head. (Because in his head would be all he had from now on, small mercy. Small mercy.) He had Bethany, Carver and Mother and Aveline. And the next step was to… to….

            Ah. The next step was to bargain with a dragon. A dragon who changed her fate so often and so quickly he couldn’t quite factor in all the things that she might do.

            There were only three things (as of now) in his future capable of blinding him to the fates. The dragon was one of them. And she was coming.

            “Trouble,” he heard Bethany murmur, from his right.

            “On it,” Carver answered, and he and Aveline turned to meet the oncoming horde.

            “There’s no end to them,” Bethany cursed beneath her breath, forlorn. Garrett squeezed her hand and felt for fate again. She was elusive, and there was a chance that she wouldn’t, but… ah. There she was.

            “Don’t worry,” he whispered to his sister, just as the heat of dragon’s fire burned over their heads. “I told you, this was the best I could possibly give you.”

            The darkspawn fled, or were charred, and the dragon fazed down to a woman with a play of golden light. She sauntered to their group, still trailing a burning corpse in her wake.

            “Well, well, what do we have here.” She commented dryly, taking in their rag-tag group, eyes lingering on his macabre injury.

            “That depends on who or what is asking,” Garrett mused as he forced himself once more to his feet. He tried not to think about how hard it was to stay standing, or exactly how much he had to lean on Bethany for balance.

            The woman (Dragon, Mother, Goddess) laughed.

            “Oh,” she preened, “You, I like.” She tossed the dead darkspawn to the side, the flames licking at it seeming not to bother her one whit.

            “I know who she is,” Aveline supplied from her place back at Wesley’s side (wouldn’t be long now. He was fading fast already.) “She’s the Witch of the Wilds.”

            “Among other things. Also Flemmeth, Asha’bellanar, and ‘an old woman who talks too much,’” Flemmeth offered. He felt (saw, knew?) Carver step up to face her more steadily, his jaw squared.

            “Is there a reason you’ve come here, Witch?” he questioned, as respectfully as he could muster. Flemmeth’s eyes glinted coldly. She gestured to the battlefield behind herself.

            “Imagine my surprise when I see a mighty Ogre, felled amidst the rampaging horde. I don’t suppose that was the work of one of your lot, was it?” Bethany and Carver both closed rank to stand protectively in front of him, their weapons drawn, as if they would protect him from the dragon’s interest. He almost wanted to laugh. “I see! Face an ogre alone, and all you have to show for it is a little blindness? Why, you got off easy!” she meant the jibe to be cruel. Garrett only grinned, toothy and wide-mouthed in response.

            “I know!” he agreed, his hands searching for the warm shoulders that should have blocked Flemmeth from sight, reminding himself they were still here (both of them. Still here. Still whole. Small mercy. Small mercy) “What’s two eyes for two siblings?” He said, mouth getting away from him in his joy. The twins tensed under his fingertips, both realizing the full truth of what he’d left unsaid. The fates shifted ever so little. Oh. Oh. They were going to argue about that now. Whoops.

            At least his delirium seemed to be working where Flemmeth was involved. She blinked in the face of his candidness, let loose another guffaw, and turned as if to leave.  But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t possibly, he had her. Her interest was piqued.

            “Well, funny child, if you’re trying to outrun the blight, I’ll have you know you’re going the wrong way.”

            “There’s nowhere else to go,” Carver spat, “Lothering is gone and Ostagar is overrun.”

            “Please,” Bethany finally gave in, letting her weapon fall to her side. She glanced at the people she was protecting, knew there had to be some way… “If you could… help us. Somehow. We need to get to our family in Kirkwall. If you could just get us to Gwaren, we could—”

            “Sadly,” the dragon called, her gold eyes already sparking, “my charity is at an end.”

            “I promise,” Garrett called, his thoughts getting ahead of him. The timeways were changing too fast—too slippery to keep hold of in response to every action the dragon took, and he was addled with blood-loss and blindness besides. He spoke out of turn, a sentence too early, and the Dragon… _focused_ on him.

            “What did you say?” She asked, stiff and dangerous. She walked back toward them with a predator’s prowl.

            “I… would promise anything if you could save my family,” He corrected his mistake, making it sound as if he’d just had a brief moment of dizziness, as if he’d just forgotten half the sentence the first time. Note to self—do not allow Flemmeth to realize predictive powers.

            Gradually, gradually, her piercing, breath-stopping focus abated. She huffed in amusement, and smoke trailed from her nostrils, ever so faintly.

            “Is it fate, or chance?” she asked the open air, “I can never decide.”

            “Then perhaps it is both,” He couldn’t resist saying, knowing full-well he spoke the truth. She was a being of chance, he a being of fate. There could be no avoiding it.

            She _focused_ on him again, her gold eyes piercing even through his blindness.

            “Yes,” she drawled, and for a second he thought she might leave them all behind. She might not do it after all, but she…. She pulled the amulet from the air, and left it in Carver’s hands.

            The witch got them to Gwaren, sans Wesley… and his eyes.

            Well, he couldn’t save everyone.


	3. The Consequences of Small Mercies (the least he would pay)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god. I can't believe all the names I had spelled incorrectly. /headdesk.  
> will you ever forgive me?  
> names fixed. chapter 2 out. yay.  
> please comment!  
> *Edit: Hello! I originally wanted to go much further with this story, but it seems such a natural end point, that I left it complete. If I continue with the next Acts of the game, I'll post them in sequels instead. :)

* * *

 

            “Maker’s breath,” Bethany swore at a whisper, over and over as if it were an incantation. Her hands moved over the ruin of her brother’s face, trying to do something to heal him for what felt like the hundredth time already. She couldn’t bear to see the gaping wound where his piercing, too-blue eyes used to sit. She couldn’t bear the thought of how easily he might have died instead, or knowing that…. Apparently, he’d done this knowingly to spare her and Carver something worse, somehow.

            It all seemed too terrible and mad to be true. She’d watched, helpless as Aveline had to kill her own husband, as her wonderful, ever-strong brother collapsed from pain and blood-loss. They’d flown to the outskirts of Gwaren on the back of a dragon, and now they were all crammed, aching and wounded, in a room too small for them at an inn full of too many people, waiting for a ship.

            “Maker’s breath,” She repeated, her whisper catching and breaking on her panic. She couldn’t do anything to fix Garrett’s eyes. They were gone. The best she could do was stop the bleeding, and help the whole thing to scar faster. It would be a terrible mar on his face for the rest of his life. There was even a notch in the bridge of his nose where cartilage and bone had just been swiped away.

            “You keep saying that, and the words will lose all meaning,” Carver’s annoyed voice drifted to her from the floor. They’d given Mother and Garrett the room’s two beds. Aveline, Bethany and Carver had decided to stick it out on the floor. Bethany stilled her magic, took a breath to steady herself and glanced at the other bodies in the dark. Mother and Aveline still appeared to be sleeping soundly. Only Carver’s eyes glinted dimly back at her under the pale glint of the moon. “Is he still dead to the world?” Bethany shuttered at the thoughtless wording. So easily, _so easily_ he could have been dead. If his nose shattered just the wrong way and the flecks of bone had entered his brain, if the taint had touched him as well as Wesley, if the ogre’s claw had driven just a bit deeper…

            “He’s sleeping, as far as I can tell, yes.” She answered, partly to ground herself. Had Garrett seen all this coming all along? Had he grown up with visions of this kind of horror dancing through his mind?

            It was no small wonder that she and Carver had to work so hard to keep him nailed to reality, when seeing the same things made her want to spiral into madness herself.

            Carver pulled himself up off the floor, and sat beside her on the bed. He looked at the wound on their brother’s face for the first time without bandages or too much blood barring the sight for what it really was.

            “Andraste’s ass,” he swore, the same way she’d been repeating her own curses beneath her breath for the better part of the last hour. They were twins, after all. “Not even father could fix that, could he.”

            “No,” Bethany answered needlessly. They both knew the answer. _Two eyes for two siblings_ , Garrett had said, gladly, as if it were a special bargain at the market. The words weighed heavy in both of their hearts.

* * *

 

            Aveline was temporarily broken, his mother couldn’t bear to look at him and the twins kept throwing him dirty glances while they thought couldn’t see, but all and all, he felt as if he’d won the lottery. He’d done it. He’d _really_ done it. Everything seemed giddy and bright. He had to keep calming himself—keep reminding himself that this wasn’t the end of the story.

            The new way was not at all clear; he hadn’t thought too deeply about the rest of this mess quite yet. He’d been uncertain whether his gamble with the ogre might end in his death (small mercy it was only blind, he could deal with blind) and with the fates changing this way or that and so much hinging on the actions of that Dragon, who he couldn’t predict at _all_ , the timeways to come had been shadowed, unclear. Now they stretched and wove before him, back to a fair length again, back to…

            No…

            No they stopped again, not far away. They were shielded by the second agent of chance. So soon? The next mess not two years away? Had it been that close before? He didn’t…

            “Hey,” Bethany’s touch on his arm dragged him back to the present with a start. He blinked (or would have, if not for small mercies) and took a glance at the timeway they were in to see where he was, who he was with. They were in a tiny room at an inn in Gwaren. Mother and Aveline had gone together to bargain for food with the small amount of money they had. Carver was perched on a wooden chair by the room’s one, diminutive window. He and Bethany had been playing cards when she laid down her hand to come shake Garrett out of his daze. Somehow, she could tell how out of it he was, even without his usual vacant stare to cue her in.

            “Are you back with us, fuzzy-brain?” Carver teased, motioning for Bethany to lead him to the bed just within Carver’s reach, promising wordlessly to Garrett-sit for a while, to keep his mind from flying away with him.

            “Just because I’m blind doesn’t mean I can’t still see you, you know.” He told them gently, and sat where Carver wanted him to anyway. He heard Bethany muffle a laugh at the look on her twin’s face. “He’s got two aces, by the way.”

            “Aha! I knew it!” She chimed.

            “Hey!”  Carver sputtered. “Why are you helping her? No fair playing favorites!” Favorite? No, Bethany wasn’t his favorite. But she was his Bethany, as Carver was Carver. He’d never loved one more, he’d just had to treat them differently to make sure they both—

            “ _I see who your favorite is now,_ ” _Carver growled, angry as Garrett chose to take Bethany along on the expedition. The betrayal was open and obvious on his face. He’d wanted to go on this expedition so much, but what could Garrett do? If Bethany stayed, the Templars would take her, and what kind of life would that be? What kind of life would that…?_

            Wait. Wait, no—

_“I….see.” His sister frowned, utterly devastated as he chose to bring Carver along instead. He was consigning her to the circle, and they all knew it. But it was a better life than the one he could give her if she delved into the deep roads. He already had doubts about the way things were going with Carver. What if he messed up? What if the ritual didn’t take? What if_

What was—

            _“Alright! Let’s go!” Carver cheered as they marched away together. He tried to take both of them this time, without Anders, certain he could keep them from getting tainted, from getting captured or pulled away by the Templars. He was wrong._

_(Two eyes for two siblings, and the deal had been such a steal, he really should have known._

_Blindness wasn’t the price. It was the down payment.)_

            “Garrett!” Carver was roaring at him, both hands wrapped tight around his upper arms. He was still on the bed in the tiny room, still two years and many, many miles away from the next price, the next disaster.

            “Come on, brother, don’t leave us behind just yet,” Bethany spoke from her place at his hip, her hand tangled tightly with his own. The twins were knelt on either side of him, had apparently been trying to get through to him for long enough that they’d begun to despair.

            “I think… there are a few years left before that happens,” he told her, quiet and shaken himself. Falling into his own madness was a very real danger, but so long as he had them. So long as there were two, he could keep himself going.

            (But he can’t save everyone.

            And sometimes there is _nothing he could do_ —)

            Two eyes for two siblings, and everything else to keep them. All that he was, all that he had, he would give. He would find a way, he _would_.

            “Oh thank the Maker,” Bethany cried out in relief, slinging an arm over his shoulder and burying her face in his arm even as Carver pulled away.

            “No favorites,” Garrett gasped as he felt his brother’s warm grasp leave, groping blindly to catch Carver’s hand and keep him tangled in the pile. “I can’t play favorites. I would never—”

            “Andraste’s heaving bosom, is that what set you off?” Carver’s exasperation sounded oddly wet and tear-tinged. “Such a stupid, little thing. Maker, Bethany, what happened while I was gone? You weren’t joking before. He’s so much worse.”

            “A lot. Happened. While you were gone,” Bethany gritted, frustrated. He knew she was thinking of their Father’s death, and their Mother’s depression, and all the messes they’d had to learn to deal with together while their brother’s absence ate at them, the place where he should have been raw and open like a sore. (But it was the best he could do. It was the best he could—)

            “Don’t you dare start again, you utter dick,” it was Carver, not Bethany this time, who caught him slipping. And how could he let even one of them go?

            Two eyes for two siblings. He needed them both.

            “No favorites,” he pressed again, and Carver made a strange, wounded sound.

            “Alright, yeah, I get it.” He assented, and a few dark threads of fate burned away.

* * *

 

            Breathe in, breathe out, don’t think.

            “Aveline,” one of the Hawke children, Bethany, addressed her as they prepared to go out for another day, fighting for food and supplies in the overrun market. The ship to Kirkwall was to arrive in the next couple days. Good thing Carver had known the shipmaster and bought them passage ahead of time. There were so many others trying to find their way out… she wondered if there even would have been room for everyone, if Wesley had not…

            Breathe in, breathe out. Don’t Think.

            “Are you alright, Aveline?” the girl called to her again, one tanned hand reaching out to grasp her arm, as if by reflex. The redhead covered her new friend’s hand with her own, forcing something of a smile. World gone mad, or no, it was oddly nice to be fussed over.

            “No,” she admitted, never one to lie, “but I will be.” She took the chance to look Bethany over. The girl looked exhausted, perhaps even more so than the rest of them. Her status as make-shift healer left her magically drained as well as physically. However magic worked, Aveline knew that probably wasn’t healthy. Carver and the eldest Hawke seemed to be squabbling over bandages behind her shoulder. Carver had taken it upon himself to bandage the ugly wound Hawke had suffered against the ogre foe, and apparently Hawke had taken it upon himself in turn to be utterly uncooperative.

            “Is it safe, to leave those two to their own devices?”

            “Define, ‘safe,’” Bethany retorted tiredly, shaking her head with a look of annoyed fondness. They seemed oddly close, those three. But then what did Aveline know? She had no siblings herself. She supposed she had no experience from which to judge.  “Are you and Mother going out again?” Bethany shot a glance at poor Leandra, clearly disapproving. The older woman was seated perfectly still on the edge of her assigned mattress, hands folded on her lap, carefully avoiding looking at her eldest son. She would be able to handle what had been done to her child in time, Aveline knew, but physical reminders of one’s own powerlessness, of the inability to keep loved ones safe were always hard to bear. (Breathe in, breathe out. Don’t think.) They couldn’t all be as strong and stubborn as Bethany.

            “I believe so. Your mother saw a ship come in through the window after we got back yesterday. Figured we’d venture out and see what supplies might have arrived.”

            “Would you mind trying to pick something up for my brother while you’re out?” She had a funny way of saying “ _my brother_ ” so that Aveline knew exactly which one she meant.

            “Of course not. What does he need?” Hawke had given up a lot when he fought that huge beast. He faced his new disability with hardly a wince, didn’t even seem to notice it. It was admirable, if a little strange. Certainly Aveline didn’t mind performing some minor errand for him if there was a need.

            “It’s just…” Bethany huffed, trying to find the right words to say, “He thinks there might be trouble if people see his face. There’s a lot of people who might just react like…” she trailed off, looking briefly back to Leandra, unmoving and perfectly-postured on her bed.

            “I understand,” and she did. It would be hard enough to get in to any city as a tired bunch of refugees. Probably worse if people thought they were dragging a cripple along. “Does he want a hood?”

            “No, he said a blindfold would be good enough. If you could just get a long enough fabric selvage or find a rag easy enough to tear, I’m sure that’s all he needs.” Aveline nodded, grabbed her shield and her sword, and stepped to the door. She always felt better when she had a purpose.

            “Coming, Madam Hawke?” The woman blinked at her, clearing away the fog that had darkened her face. Her nose wrinkled.

            “I’m no school-teacher Aveline. How many times must I tell you to call me Leandra?” She pouted as only a grown woman could, pulling herself to her feet. Aveline laughed, and grabbed the group’s coin purse from the table. The jangling it made as she tied it to her belt was unfortunately quiet. Not much left to barter with, and still the room to keep. That boat better come quick.

            “You’re quite right, Madam Leandra. Now, let’s go shopping.” And she managed to cajole the lady into a small, sardonic smile. She liked Leandra. They understood each other in a lot of ways. Having dead husbands in common probably helped, she’d realized. ( _Don’t think.)_

            “Carver, if you wrap it like that, I’m going to be able to hear about as well as I can see,” Hawke’s dry sarcasm broke through her melancholy. She shook her head, amazed at his uncanny ability to make fun of himself so soon after his accident. Her hand reached for the doorknob.       “Well, if you don’t stop whining, you’re not going to be able to _talk_ either!” Carver’s threats and Bethany’s attempts to calm the whole situation and just take over herself were cheerful and somehow ridiculous. She wondered how much worse off she would be if they hadn’t been kind enough to keep her along—hadn’t been here for her to share another day.

            “Let’s go, dear.” Leandra reminded, standing tall and composed beside her once again. There was so much strength in this family. She wondered if she belonged here, sometimes.

            “Oh, Aveline,” Hawke suddenly murmured breathily, just before they could step through the door, and the whole atmosphere just suddenly _shifted_. There was no other way to explain it. Carver and Bethany were silent, both standing with a hand to either of Hawke’s shoulders, faces oddly grim.  

            “Yes?” she questioned, when no other words were forthcoming.

            “You should take Carver with you,” he suggested, and his siblings traded tense, worried looks with each other. Bethany nodded, and Carver turned to go without another word, picking his sword up from its place against the wall near Hawke’s bed.

            “Alright?” Aveline assented, though apparently it hadn’t been a request. Leandra patted her arm again and the three of them were off. “What was that all about?” She disliked having secrets in play around her, and the Hawke twins definitely weren’t saying something.

            “Spend enough time around my brother, and you’ll realize it’s just not worth it to argue with him.” Carver grumbled, heedless of the pinched look his mother was giving him.

            Definitely some kind of secret. And Aveline didn’t like that, but…

            (Breathe in, breathe out. Don’t think.)

* * *

   

            His mother finally came around while they were on the boat.

            They were both leaning against the ship’s hull in the cramped quarters of the cargo hold, the sea raging about them just outside. There was a light rain up top, so all the passengers were squashed together, trying to stay some kind of dry. Bethany, Carver and Aveline were stationed in a protective half circle around Garrett and his mother, wary of any pickpockets, shielding the weakest of their group from further harm.

            “Garrett, dear, your blindfold is slipping,” Leandra called as if nothing were wrong, and the twins stiffened. Even Aveline’s attention jumped to the two.

            “I hadn’t noticed,” he lied, lips quirked in something like a smile. She tutted at him, reaching out untie the fabric without missing a beat. Her hand rested on his cheek, fingers just barely touching the bandages still carefully wrapped over his healing wound.

            “You should take better care of yourself,” she cautioned, forcing herself to face him, to understand that this was the fate he’d accepted to keep them safe.

            “I do my best,” Garrett told her plainly, and his mother sighed. She arranged the blindfold so that it hid his bandages once more, tied it firmly behind his head. “Thank you,” he murmured once she was done, glad she was still here, that she still cared. Even if he knew it wouldn’t last, her shocked avoidance had been a heavy weight to bear.

            “No need for that, now,” she admonished, taking the time to arrange his hair so that it wasn’t all tied flat against his skull. “I’m your mother. It’s my job to fret over you.”

            Just like that, a layer of the tension hanging over them like a cloud lifted. 

* * *

 

            It took far too long for him to get a handle on his own mind and begin to sort this mess out. He spent most of his time on the boat cartwheeling through the possibilities, hunting for the actions and words and abilities he needed to make this all right in the end. Just as always, there were too many ways for his family to hurt, too many ways to die.

            They got to Kirkwall without any major incidents, but it was a near thing. He was looking too far ahead—so focused on stopping the worst possible ends that he almost forgot to pay attention to the stumbling blocks much earlier in the path.

            But by the time Gamlen found them, the way was clear (for now). Garrett followed the conversation with their uncle out to its finish, let the others say the things that needed saying. Then he led his little group back towards the entrance of the gallows, and was not at all surprised when Carver pulled him into a shadowed corner.

            “You cannot think for one second, that I would let you walk into danger like this.” Carver hissed, his gaze resting heavily on the red fabric hiding Garrett’s wound from view. “Bethany and I will be more than enough to work our way into the city. You can take your injured ass back up those steps and stay with mother.” Garrett tilted his head, as if considering the words. He focused on the others, noting the stiff way Bethany held herself that said she agreed, the blatant confusion on Aveline’s face.

            “It won’t work,” he told them plainly, “Gamlen promised them three recruits. Take one away, and they don’t pay the full price.”

            “And what am I, Hawke? Can I not stand for you?” Aveline offered. So quickly she’d bonded with them. Even if he hadn’t been able to See, she would have become close just the same. He smiled at her kindly.

            “If you stand for me, there will be no funds to stand for you. Your presence pays only your own way, no matter the employer we choose.” He didn’t mind being so free with his language with her now. She would know the truth of it soon, because Carver was determined—

            “Garrett, there has to be something we can do. I can promise my sword for two years, or… or I can get you into the city and stay behind myself.”

            _They worked as smugglers, and Garrett stayed with Mother. He watched his siblings toil for nearly two years. Athenril kept the Templars and the Guard both off their backs, but eventually, the Coterie decided they’d had enough. They took it upon themselves to eliminate their best competition…_

_Carver didn’t notice the assassin before it was too late. He barely had time to reach for his sword before the blade was buried, deep, between his ribs. Bethany didn’t go down. She blasted all of them with flames, incinerating every last assassin and half of Darktown besides in the throes of her grief. Maybe she could have walked away, but she stayed with the body too long. And no bribes in the world could stop the Knight Commander from putting her neck to the sword—_

            “And then, there’s that!” Carver shook him from the vision, his grip on Garrett’s arm close to bruising.

            “Garrett, maybe he’s got a point. If you suddenly lose focus on the field in this line of work…” Bethany placated. Garrett wished he could see them, to set his mind at ease. He wanted to wash away the visions of their bodies, dead and cold on the dirt.

            “The alternatives are all much worse,” he insisted, blocking those grisly fates from view. Here at least, he knew the way. He knew where he had to go.

            “So you say, but how can I trust you?”

            “Carver!” Bethany admonished her twin for his sake, “You know he’d never—”

            “Let anything happen to us. Yeah, sure. But apparently he’s not so careful about himself.” _Two eyes for two siblings_ , he’d said, and this argument had jumped into existence, leapt forward from the possibilities of things that _could_ and joined the things that _would_.

            He’d never regret it. Not for a second.

            “What was so terrible, that you decided it was better to be blind?” Carver was finally frustrated enough to ask. Even though he saw it coming, Garrett faltered at the question. He was assailed, all at once with the deadened threads of never-happenings, the same old grizzly visions that had plagued him since he’d first received his Gift.

            _How could you let her rush off like that? She was your little sister!_ His mother had begged, had accused, had cried. A thousand thousand times in a thousand realities, none of them real. And yet the words remained with him, more painful than any wound he could bear.

            “Carver, stop.” Bethany’s frantic command reached him, and pulled him from his shallow daze. She was afraid he might slip under the Web of what might be.

            “No! I want to know exactly what it is you think you spared us from. I need to know you won’t throw yourself on someone’s blade to save me from a scratch! You—”

            _The ogre grabbed Bethany, and dashed her twice against the ground. The first slam killed her instantly, her neck snapping, ribs caving in. The second just drove the broken bones deeper, and sprayed the earth with her blood._

“What?” His sister’s voice shook. Had he… had he just said that aloud? His throat burned… yes. Yes, he honestly had. Garrett tossed his head, as if that would clear the cobwebs of dreaming from his mind. He threw himself hard into the present and searched out the fuzzied horizon of fate to cheat his blindness and see. Three faces stared back at him in utter horror.

            “Two eyes for two siblings,” he reminded them, and the twins began to look ill.

* * *

 

            “Hawke,” Aveline was kind and smart enough to wait for them to have a moment alone before questioning him. They were supposed to be working together to put clean sheets on the house’s one bed. The rest of his family was scattered about, each trying to sort themselves out in their own way. Carver and Bethany were whispering conspiratorially together in the storage room across the house, where they thought he couldn’t hear. He wondered how long it would take for them to realize he’d already seen anything they could say. Mother and Gamlen had gone out to tour the city, so Leandra could see what had changed. As angry as she was about the fact they were indentured to smugglers, Mother was obviously delighted to be in Kirkwall again. And—

            _The rest of his family was scattered, each trying to find their own way. Varric was trailing his brother, still in Cumberland for now. Merrill’s clan fled the Blight, Anders fled the Circle and Fenris just fled. Isabella adventured on the high sea, still powerful and sure of herself. Sebastian was just studying, safe in the walls of the Chantry. And Aveline—_

            “Hawke,” she pressed again, this time steadying him with a hand at his upper arm. Whether she knew what was going on or not, it was easy enough to pick up a few tricks from the way the twins treated him. “I think I’ve let you keep your secrets long enough,” she demanded. Garrett tilted his head in assent.

            “What do you want to know?” he asked, more than ready to trust her in this. In his mind, she’d been his sister for most of his life. It only seemed unfair that she couldn’t know him the same way.      

            “I’m not even sure where to start,” Aveline grumped tiredly. She crossed her arms, leaning against the wall in front of him. Garrett sat on the rickety bed and gave her the chance to think. “Why did Carver talk like you chose to be blind?”

            “Because I did, in a way,” he realized as he was speaking that he had never had to explain himself to anyone before. Bethany and Carver had sort of figured things out by trial and error, and Father had understood by himself. He knew what he should say, of course, but the words felt distant, strange. “To put it simply, I…knew what would happen if I didn’t rush that thing and what would happen if I did. The consequences of one were more acceptable than the other.”  

            “Then, that rant you went on, about Bethany dying; that was what could have happened?” he winced, trying to block that particular vision from his mind. He’d suffered it enough. Now that he’d managed to move past that point, he just wanted to leave it behind.

            “It was one of the things that could have happened. Maybe the most likely thing, but there were many other possibilities. The ogre could have grabbed mother, or Carver, or Aveline. It could have—” _two dashes against the ground, two blinks of an eye were all it took to see his loved ones die, over and over and over, and he couldn’t… he couldn’t—_

Aveline’s palm met his arm again, and drew him back to the realm of the present without a word.

            “So, the daydreaming spells are, what… visions?”

            “Something like that,” he tried to evade, before wincing and correcting himself. She needed the whole truth. Nothing less would do. “It’s not like the old fairy tales, where I see a few flashes of the future every once in a while. It’s…. I see everything, all the time. Sometimes it’s hard to stay focused on _now_ instead of... everything else.”

            “You failed to mention the part where you’ll eventually get trapped thinking about ‘everything else’ and we’ll be stuck with a vegetable for a brother,” Carver’s dry voice groused from the doorway. Aveline jumped at the sound, but Garrett knew this part too well to be surprised.

            “Yes, well. I suppose there is that.” His brother huffed in annoyance at his glibness, his posture stiff and unsure. Bethany was a shaded silhouette behind him. They were waiting for Aveline to make even one wrong move, protective to the last.

            “I see. That… makes a lot of sense now.” Dark shadows crossed Aveline’s expression and Garrett _knew_ before she even opened her mouth next, what she would say. He cut her off before she could make the twins even twitchier.

             “Being all knowing doesn’t make me all powerful. Sometimes, there’s just nothing I can do,” and by the Maker, didn’t that just hurt to admit. The words burned every day in his own heart, ate at him like a poison. But they were what Aveline needed to hear.

            “Then… Wesley…” _The templar and the soldier fought admirably, back to back, but there was only so much they could do. One wrong move, one wrong opening and the horde rushed in to fill the gap, sliding a wicked blade over Wesley’s side. He cried out, feeling the insidious blood drip into his wound and into him, his system overloaded with the shock. Aveline’s instincts kicked in. She bowled over the spawn responsible with a shield, and punched the damn thing to death._

_“They will not have you,” she’d said so firmly, so surely. Was there no way he could have made it true? Was there no way he could have—_

            “Hawke,” she called him for the third time, and her grip on his arm was fit to bruise. He turned his face toward her, his hand covering hers.

            “I couldn’t save him. I tried, but…” He couldn’t save everyone. He _knew_ that, but he… there were possibilities of worlds where Wesley lived and Aveline did not. Where both lived, and mother or Carver or Bethany did not. And those worlds were unacceptable, but… Wesley had truly been a good man, and given time, he could have been family too. Garrett couldn’t afford to let himself mourn the loss of that relationship, that solid, strong tie. If he mourned every life he couldn’t save, he’d never stop.

            But that didn’t spare him from the guilt.

            “That’s good enough for me.” Aveline murmured, after what seemed like far too long. Her fingers loosened, her back straightened.

            “It had better be,” Carver growled, closer than he’d been before. Garrett took a peek at the timeways and realized his siblings were in the room, weapons drawn. They liked Aveline well enough, but if she tried something… Garrett shuddered again at the brief image of his family killing itself. There was no way he could let that happen.

            “Maybe this wasn’t my place,” she placated tiredly, not bothering to draw her shield in turn. “I understand your reasons for keeping such secrets. I shouldn’t have pried.”

            “No, you shouldn’t have,” Bethany agreed tersely, “but now you know. So what will you do about it?”

            “Oh please,” Garrett chided them all sarcastically. “I think I of all people know what she’ll do about it. Put your damn weapons up and look innocent. Gamlen’s going to be here in about five minutes, and he’s the one member of this family who actually can’t be allowed to know. Aveline’s good for it.” They all stared at him in varying degrees of shock, before the sword and staff were slowly put away. Carver stormed edgily back to the storage room, to finish the job mother had actually set him and Bethany to when she left. His sister turned to follow him, just pausing in the doorway.

            “Well, welcome to the family then, I suppose. Find me later and we can talk about the proper ways to Garrett-sit.”

            “I’m right here, you know,” he whined, but he didn’t really mind. The term had been made up by the twins what seemed like an eternity ago. Bethany laughed at his expense and trekked on after Carver.

            “Family?” Aveline asked in a daze.

            “Whether you like it or not,” he insisted, grinning.

            “I…. thank you.” She settled for saying, and pulled him into an awkward, one-armed hug. As fiercely loving as Aveline could be, she'd never quite get the hang of expressing it.

            “Give it a few years. Then see if you still want to thank me,” he joked, and her laughter was a worthy reward. He basked in it, let himself enjoy this perfect, unchanging moment. Carver and Bethany and Mother still alive, the way still clear, but changing, changing.

            Each of their fates shifted and changed with every breath they took and Garrett worried he might not be enough to guard them. He’d thought that their futures in Kirkwall had always been so convoluted and confusing because they were so far away, but even as they approached the fates remained twisted. It would be more difficult than ever to keep his family safe, now. There were so many more to protect—so many players and possibilities in the mix and he already knew that sometimes and some timeways, there was _nothing he could do_ …He couldn’t save everyone.

            But he was damn well going to try.


End file.
